


Heaven in Hiding

by boughofawillowtree



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Clothing Kink, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Cuddling & Snuggling, Fetish, Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019, Historical, Historical Dress, Historical References, Light Bondage, M/M, Soft Aziraphale (Good Omens), Soft Crowley (Good Omens), Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22659904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boughofawillowtree/pseuds/boughofawillowtree
Summary: Aziraphale wears a variety of elaborate outfits through the ages. Crowley can't stop thinking about them for reasons he doesn't understand. Meanwhile, neither of them understands what the marks on their backs mean. Both mysteries turn out to be quite pleasant to investigate.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 115
Collections: Good Omens Holiday Swap 2019, Ixnael’s Recommendations





	Heaven in Hiding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyDragonsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyDragonsbane/gifts).



> This is one of two pinch-hit gifts for @ladydragonsbane. I wrote two because they are very late, and because the first one I wrote accidentally strayed pretty far from the requested prompts. The prompts this one covers include: snuggling and cuddling, soulmates, slow burn, and the exploration of a fetish. Huge thanks to ladydragonsbane for being patient and for the lovely combo of prompts!

“Oh, Crowley!”

The chiding laughter in the angel’s voice was enough to make Crowley regret having asked him for help. But it was much too late for that. Crowley could only glare at him from beneath a tangle of far too much fabric.

“Are you going to help, or just stand there and enjoy the show?”

Aziraphale, still chuckling, stepped into Crowley’s room. “You know, even the children are tying their own togas these days.”

“I don’t know why they insist on re-inventing this nonsense every couple of centuries,” Crowley grumbled. 

“Why don’t you just manifest them? That’s what you usually do, isn’t it?” Aziraphale pawed through the folds and wrinkles of Crowley’s attempts at wrapping himself, looking for the end of the darkly-dyed sheet.

Crowley shrugged, well aware that wouldn’t make Aziraphale’s task any easier. In truth, he didn’t fully know why he’d been possessed of a sudden desire to learn the human’s method of dressing. He had seen Aziraphale a few days back, impeccably dressed in a pristine white toga with gold pins twinkling at its folds, and something in him fluttered and twinged. Suddenly he wanted to feel the weight of human clothing, the texture of the weave under his fingers, wanted to know what it was like for his body to be concealed behind something so solid and yet so pliable.

This mess was not exactly what he expected.

“How did you even manage this?” Aziraphale clucked as he tried to untwist a particularly gnarled section under Crowley’s arm.

Then the angel went quiet. Crowley cringed. He knew exactly what Aziraphale had seen that stilled him. The mark, just below his left shoulderblade, where his wings would protrude. Some kind of stylized looping Enochian that he’d never been able to read in a mirror. He had always assumed it had been stamped on him during his Fall, and was some kind of shameful brand. 

Crowley wondered if Aziraphale could read it, but couldn’t bear asking. 

Aziraphale, always too polite for his own good, quickly resumed his work with no mention of the stain on Crowley’s skin. Within a few moments Crowley looked nearly presentable in his own black toga.

“There you are!” Aziraphale patted the demon’s shoulders with pride, then stepped back to admire his own handiwork.

“Thanks.” Crowley had nothing else to say.

That night, unwilling to remove the carefully draped wool, Crowley slept in his toga, his body warm and damp under the layers, his fingers toying with the places where fabric met skin, his mind replaying the moments when Aziraphale had held it and slowly enrobed him.

***

“Come back to mine? It’s colder than the three fates’ bedsheets out here.”

Aziraphale, never one to argue against his own comfort, tromped back to Crowley’s tent, pitched on the damp and foggy moors of Britain. And so there they were, Crowley having snapped himself immediately into more reasonable clothing, Aziraphale standing there in his shining human armor.

“Oh, blast,” he said, grabbing for his helmet and succeeding only in knocking it crooked. “I sent my squire off.”

Crowley, in the process of lighting a crackling fire in the rather unlikely fireplace, rose. “Need a hand, good sir?” 

“Ungh.” Aziraphale’s armor rattled and clanged as he tried to right his helmet enough to see. “Yes, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Crowley tugged the helmet off, eliciting a sigh of relief from Aziraphale, then pulled the fur cape from his shoulders. It was thick and soft, and smelled of the angel. Crowley laid it gingerly over the back of a chair, wondering if the angel could be tempted into forgetting it in Crowley’s tent. 

Returning to the armor, Crowley took one of the heavy leather straps in his hand, sliding the buckle open. The metal was cold under his fingertips, but beneath it, the angel’s body was warm, almost steaming in the frigid Wessex air as he pulled the metal away.

Aziraphale visibly relaxed as Crowley lifted the heavy plate armor from him and set it on the floor. He rolled his neck, then stretched his arms. A strange feeling settled in Crowley’s gut as he watched the display.

Finally, Aziraphale was down to his doublet, and he sank onto Crowley’s fur-piled cot with a satisfied sigh. Crowley tended to the fire, insisting to himself that the blazing in his cheeks was simply the result of his proximity. 

They talked of knighthood, of useless squires and clever damsels, of clever squires and useless damsels, of lords and kingdoms and never-dry boots. And when Aziraphale left, taking his fur cloak with him, Crowley lay amid his own furs, thinking of the way Aziraphale had moved under his hands as he undressed the angel, returning again and again to the instant when each strap loosed.

***

By the time he and Aziraphale had come to their Arrangement, swapping curses for blessings and miracles for temptations, Crowley had been forced to admit - within the privacy of his own mind - that something about the angel’s clothing sparked a fever in him which would not abate.

Crowley wanted the angel, yes. Had wanted him since they first met on the garden wall. Wanted him in ways far beyond this tickling desire. But this desire, small as it was in the grand context of Crowley’s feelings for Aziraphale, would not be ignored. As human fashion grew more and more complex, and the angel took to dressing himself in all the fashions of the day, Crowley found that his thoughts of linen underthings and lacy collars and dangling cuffs grew stronger and louder.

He thought often, too often, of the fact that Aziraphale’s preference for human clothes rather than miracled manifestations must mean that each thread, each seam, was rich and real. He pictured the angel doing up every button individually. Crowley longed to run his fingers over it all. Wanted to peel each layer back slowly, the way he had long ago in Wessex, wanted to feel the stitches and the fastenings against his own skin.

He never considered that these near-nightly fantasies might come to fruition one mild London night.

The two had just left a production of  _ Hamlet _ , during which the actors playing Claudius and Laertes had put on a positively abysmal performance. Burbage’s ongoing agitation with his colleagues, and the growing absurdity of the play, had left both of them near laugh-drunk by the time they stumbled to the stoop of Crowley’s cottage. 

“Some wine, angel?”

“Gertrude, do not drink!” Aziraphale giggled. 

“Come, let me wipe thy face!” Crowley grabbed at Aziraphale, then feigned an overly dramatic collapse, opening his door in the process and dragging Aziraphale in with him. The two collapsed in a hysterical heap on the tidy floor, and suddenly Crowley’s palms lay flat over the plush, quilted brocade of Aziraphale’s shirt.

The two looked at each other, a question ringing between them like a gong had been struck. And then there was an answer, clear between them, and Crowley’s fingers were undoing every button, tugging loose the delicate laces tying everything up just so. 

Aziraphale squirmed underneath him, impatient, but Crowley had waited for so long, wished so many times, and he was determined to relish the experience at his own pace. 

Until he set aside the final layer of Aziraphale’s shirts and was struck by something he had never, in many millennia of imagining, thought he’d see if he finally bared the angel’s flesh. 

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, working to keep his voice even. “Why is my name on your back in the infernal tongue?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale replied with poorly feigned disinterest. “Is that what that is?”

“Yes, angel. It’s my name. Why is it there?”

“Well I suppose for the same ineffable reason my name is on yours, in Enochian.”

“ _ What _ ?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said in that maddeningly prim way of his. “I saw it in Rome. And a few times since,” he added with a slight air of judgment. 

“And you never thought to say anything?”

Aziraphale looked around the room as if searching for a plausible reason not to meet Crowley’s eyes. “I thought you knew.”

“Knew?” Crowley sputtered. “How on earth would I know? Demons can’t read Enochian, ‘specially not the fancy stuff backwards through a mirror.”

“I apologize,” Aziraphale said, though Crowley had the distinct impression that the angel would not be able to articulate what, exactly, he was sorry for. 

“But why, then? Why do we have each other’s names on us?”

Aziraphale shrugged. “One must assume it’s part of God’s ineffable plan.”

Crowley was confused. And angry. Confused about why he was angry, and angry that he was confused. “One must assume - I mustn’t anything, angel, and I’d like to know why we’ve been walking around all these centuries somehow stamped with each other’s names?”

“Perhaps I should be off, then,” Aziraphale muttered. He began to pull on his clothing, and Crowley nearly choked on the swell of frustrated passion that overcame him at the sight of the angel’s plump, creamy arms sliding into sleeves. 

“Angel, don't go,” Crowley pleaded, but he could barely speak as he watched Aziraphale tug his collar into place and bend to straighten out his hose. The angel’s well made heels clicked against the floor as he stepped out, leaving Crowley a mess of baffled defeat.

***

In the years that followed, Crowley ran over the abortive attempt in his head thousands, if not millions, of times. Through all his ruminating ran the slender hope that since Aziraphale had allowed it to begin, once, he might allow it to happen again, someday.

And Crowley was determined to make sure that, should such an occasion arise, he would not let the opportunity slip by. He had been a fool, more than a fool, the last time. There would be no mentions of the Ineffable Plan, no discussion of the mysterious marks that neither of them had mentioned since. No demanding questions. 

Just clothes. Aziraphale’s clothes, perfectly stiff where they were meant to be and soft everywhere else, yielding and falling under Crowley’s touch. And the flesh underneath, revealed like a book opened to a pristine white page.

Someday, he told himself. Crowley could not tolerate the thought that perhaps he had lost his only chance. It would happen again.

It had to.

Finally, perfectly, there was Aziraphale, chained in the Bastille, looking like a frilly cupcake, with lace pouring down his front and over his wrists, and - bless it all - shiny satin shoes.

Crowley had to come up with a reason to make the angel change before they headed out for crepes, or he’d be reduced indefinitely to a blithering heap.

So Aziraphale had changed, and they’d had their crepes, and as his head cleared Crowley felt his tempter’s charms returning. There was a lovely little  _ hôtel  _ attached to the restaurant, so Crowley suggested that they might take a room, given that it was a bit bloody outside. And there, in the privacy afforded by drawn blinds, another suggestion: that Aziraphale might be more comfortable in his previous outfit.

After all, he did have standards.

“Ah,” Aziraphale sighed, returning his clothing with an easy snap. “That’s better.”

There it was again, in all its glory, the ridiculous cuffs dripping with lace; bright, skin-tight white enclosing the curves of his calves; a fawn coat with more unnecessary flourishes than an archangel’s speech.

Crowley could hardly contain himself. 

“Those can’t be comfortable,” he said, gesturing toward Aziraphale’s shoes.

“Well they aren’t exactly meant for marching in the streets,” the angel said, haughty.

“We’re in for the night, though, aren’t we?” Crowley lounged on the room’s powder-pink chaise, watching, forcing himself to remain casual. “Have them off, then.”

“Oh, alright.” Aziraphale sat down on the bed.

There was a coiled quality to Crowley as he waited for the right moment, willing it to happen. Surely all those stuffy layers would be a hindrance. He just had to catch the angel at the right instant. 

Just as his tempter’s instincts had promised, there it was: Aziraphale bent to tug off his shoe, evincing a slight discomfort as he had to navigate the thick layers of his coat to do so. And Crowley struck with a serpent’s quickness.

“Let me,” Crowley said, and he left no time for the angel to demur before he was kneeling at Aziraphale’s feet, tenderly holding the ridiculous shoe. The silverwhite satin was smooth as river water in his hand. He slid it off, then ran his hand up Aziraphale’s leg, up to the shining buckle at his knee.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered. 

“Yes?” Crowley looked up at Aziraphale, trying to gauge his reaction past all the frippery and fuss.

“Yes,” the angel said.

Crowley cupped that  _ yes _ in his palms like a new-hatched bird, held it between his teeth like a lioness scruffing her cub, tucked it to his breast like a suckling babe. It was fresh and precious and he would not, could not, let it go. 

Crowley undid the buckle, thrilling at the delicacy of the prong as he nudged it out of the strap. Aziraphale made an impatient noise and moved to kick the rest of his pants off, but Crowley laid his hands against the angel’s thighs, stilling him. 

He pulled Aziraphale’s other shoe off, setting it to the side, then rolled the perfect white tights down, gathering the sheer fabric around the angel’s ankles before pulling them off. Then he straightened up, his head level with Aziraphale’s lap. When Crowley reached for Aziraphale’s waistband, the angel grabbed his hands and pulled them close, pressed them against him, fumbling to undress himself.

“Please,” Crowley murmured, gently tugging his hand away and reaching for one of the buttons on Aziraphale’s coat. “Please.”

Perhaps it was the wrong thing to say. Perhaps he was breaking the promise he had made to himself so many times as he lay in the dark rehearsing. He should be following Aziraphale’s lead, giving the angel everything, anything, he wanted. Would he annoy the angel, pulling back? Would Aziraphale, given a moment’s pause, realize his mistake and leave again? Crowley shouldn’t have risked it, and he winced as he readied himself for another shattered dream.

But Aziraphale simply lay back on the bed, smiling, his arms spread invitingly.

It was beyond anything Crowley had ever allowed himself to hope for. Aziraphale, breathing hard under him, the finery falling from his body under Crowley’s touch. The demon, growing bolder as the night drew on, pulled his own shirt off, then laid his own bare chest across Aziraphale’s, letting the lace and leather and wool trail across his skin. 

Aziraphale gasped at the sight, then again moved to take his coat off. “No,” Crowley begged, leaning down to stop Aziraphale’s hands with a kiss, taking each finger into his mouth as he blindly petted the angel’s clothed body. He took his time with each button, finally spreading the coat open under Aziraphale. 

Clearly growing impatient, Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley and pulled him close. Crowley buried his face in the lace ruff, chiseling its scratchy texture into his memory, while Aziraphale peppered his forehead with tentative kisses.

Crowley could have gleaned a lifetime’s enjoyment from the lace against his cheek, had the angel not been there, full and warm and present. But he was, and not the finest threads woven by Athena herself could hold a candle to Aziraphale. Crowley met Aziraphale’s lips with his, and the two tumbled into a kiss that held eons of unspoken want. 

Then Aziraphale’s hands were on Crowley’s, guiding them to the closures of his shirt, a wordless request Crowley was more than happy to oblige. There could be no better joy, Crowley thought, than his mouth against Aziraphale while his hands were in the folds of the angel’s clothes. Everything he was, everything he had ever thought, or seen, or been, or wanted, was only in service of this experience, of bringing him here. 

When the shirt was finally freed, Crowley sat up, hips straddling Aziraphale, and held the garment to himself, inhaling it, as Aziraphale watched with adoration. And then Crowley dropped it, falling back against Aziraphale, bare chest to bare chest, breathing in tandem.

Outside, the night sky had gone entirely black. Shouting rose up from the streets. But the angel and the demon were blind to the heavens, deaf to the humans. They lay amid the scatterings of Aziraphale’s outfit, both naked from the waist up, gazing at each other, amber eyes to crystal blue. Aziraphale half-closed his eyes and smiled, his round chin tilted slightly down. Crowley understood. He had always understood what the angel wanted, and never wanted anything but to give it to him.

Aziraphale had let him go slowly, let Crowley savor the strange elation of undressing him. Now he was the one setting a gentler tempo, and Crowley happily obliged. 

Crowley rolled onto his side, nestled up next to the angel. A snap of his demonic fingers dimmed the lights, closed the shades, and tidied up, though he did leave most of the clothing strewn about the bed. He held the angel close, stroking Aziraphale’s belly, his chest, his arms.

And then, the mark. The one Crowley had commanded himself to ignore. He couldn’t help himself, however, his hand moving as if on its own, tracing down Aziraphale’s shoulderblade, then running over the swooping, spiked letters of the demonic tongue.

Aziraphale shuddered, gripped the sheets, and let out a sound Crowley could only describe as obscene. He yanked his hand back.

“I - I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have -”

“Again,” Aziraphale breathed. “Please.”

This time, Crowley used only one finger, tracing the calligraphy, silently repeating his own name, as Aziraphale moaned. 

“What is that?” Aziraphale turned to face Crowley, the flush on his face visible in the low light.

“I don’t know,” Crowley said. 

As if this would solve the mystery, Aziraphale snuggled closer and shifted so that he could drape one arm over Crowley, brushing along the demon’s back, until a heaving shiver indicated he had found what he was looking for.

Crowley saw stars. No, he saw galaxies. Nebulae. He was a planet, a sun, floating in an eternity that was him and Aziraphale, the very vastness of space full of them, of their togetherness. There were no atoms, no molecules, no waves nor particles, only his being and the angel’s, infinite and one. 

What he felt when undressing Aziraphale, he felt in his body. In his groin, in the pumping of his corporation’s heart, in the sparking of the brain matter behind his eyes. 

This, he felt in his soul - that he had one was now a certainty, despite his demonic nature, as he had just experienced its twining with another’s, and what did not exist could not be bonded. Both sensations were pleasure, but this one he felt not with his nerves, but in his very self.

They did not sleep that night, electing instead to swim in the newly discovered oceans of each other. A downy nest of pillows meant that they could hold and be held. First, they took turns touching one another’s marks, watching with fascinated joy as the other melted under their ministrations. Then they worked simultaneously, collapsing together, unsure where one ended and the other began, not bodies but essences joined. 

***

By the 19th century, the two had answered many of their questions, and laid the unanswerable ones to rest for the time being. 

Later, there would be more questions, of course, and a handful of additional answers. Later, there would be an argument in a park, and a roaring silence stretched between them. Later, there would be the melodrama of the great wars, and the odd little man who would write books upon books explaining the nature of such things as Crowley’s affection for clothing and the removal thereof. Later would come cars, those glorious inventions, and a ride declined. Later, a child, or more accurately two children, and a mad rush to avert the Apocalypse.

All that would come later. Because at the time of the first World’s Fair in London, in 1851, the two had settled in to a pleasant routine that would last at least another decade.

“Oh, you’re a blessed fool, angel,” Crowley breathed into Aziraphale’s ear as he leaned in close from behind, his fingers tangled in the tartan cravat around the angel’s neck. “How in blazes did you manage to get this so tight?”

Aziraphale made a suitably bashful noise. It was the most intricate knot Crowley had encountered in some time, and he knew Aziraphale had tied it just so, to give the demon plenty of time to savor its undoing.

“Gonna take forever to get this off you,” Crowley hissed, thrill shivering through his voice.

“Well then,” Aziraphale whined, “get on with it, dear.”

Crowley finally pulled the knot loose, freeing his hands to stray downward and toy with the little ivory buttons on Aziraphale’s shirt. He took the starchy white collar between his teeth, wetting the fabric with his tongue, Aziraphale’s mutton-chop beard fluffy against his cheek.

Outside, London had swelled with the arrival of thousands for the The Great Exhibition, gathered to witness technological marvels never before displayed. Both the angel and the demon had been busy with all manner of temptations and miracles - including a cooperative effort regarding an arrangement of fortunetelling leeches - but this afternoon, as the Crystal Palace glittered above the throngs of astonished viewers, they had a lull in their assignments. And so, as so often happened when the two found themselves with a spot of free time, a room opened up at the otherwise packed-full Brown’s Hotel.

Crowley stood behind Aziraphale, his hips pressed hard against the angel’s behind, hands roving over his front. He closed his eyes and lost himself in the familiar ridges of the corduroy waistcoat, the smooth roundness of each button. Aziraphale’s chest hitched with rapid, excited breaths as Crowley slowly made his way down, inch by delicious inch, until he was fingering the hem of Aziraphale’s shirt, rolling the neatly stitched edges back and forth.

Once the familiar processl was complete, Crowley having taken his sweet time undressing Aziraphale from the waist up and hastily doing away with his own shirts, it was time for Aziraphale’s favorite part. He certainly indulged Crowley his play, for which Crowley was endlessly grateful, but once the inexplicable marks were exposed, Aziraphale was as eager as anyone.

They would both retain their pants, as they always did. It was enough, more than enough, to be together in this way, to touch and be touched. Enough for Crowley to luxuriate in the silks and satins of Aziraphale, for Aziraphale to pamper his beloved friend. Enough for them to know the marks, to see them, to stroke them.

Later, after the wars, after the fight, after Freud, after Wilde, after Adam and Warlock, they would explore other questions and other answers. Crowley would add ‘zippers’ to his repertoire of fasteners he delighted in undoing, and the two would add another form of intimacy to this thing they shared.

For now, however, it was tartan cravats and corduroy waistcoats, mysterious marks and well-worn names. And it was enough.

They pulled each other into the bed and cozied up beneath the covers. Crowley gave the cuddles a good few minutes, then his fingers began the tantalizingly slow journey from Aziraphale’s chest, over his ribs, toward his shoulderblade and the mark it carried. 

“Oh, you devil,” Aziraphale shuddered as Crowley barely grazed one edge of his mark.

“Let’s leave our bosses out of this.”

Aziraphale laughed. Crowley would have traded every cuff, every buckle, every stocking, in the angel’s closet - on the entire earth - for that sound. 

What glory, that he should have both. 

From his pocket, he produced the tartan cravat Aziraphale had been wearing, and dangled it in front of the angel.

“You’re too cruel,” Aziraphale whispered, grinning and wriggling in anticipation.

“No, you’re impatient,” Crowley teased, looping the tie around Aziraphale’s wrists and finishing them with a bow. Aziraphale’s hands were now held in front of him, curled into gentle fists, resting just over his bellybutton.

Of course the angel could have freed himself at any moment. Of course his giggling resistance was all play. 

Crowley could play this game until the sun burned out.

“Oh, just do it already,” Aziraphale huffed.

“Wait for me, angel.” Crowley nosed gently at his hair, the curls pressed flat where his hatband had sat. 

Shifting back a few inches, Crowley traced his fingers around Aziraphale’s back. He spelled his own name in every alphabet he’d ever known. He traced celestial shapes he half-remembered from his days as a starmaker.

But he never touched the mark.

Every time he drew close, Aziraphale would hold his breath, tense with anticipation. And every time, he would deflate as Crowley’s fingers retreated, looping away. 

“Please, Crowley.”

There came a time when the exquisite torture Crowley was dragging Aziraphale through became too much for even him to stand. Always, eventually, Crowley pressed one palm against the angel’s mark, feeling him arch and cry out. Crowley wondered what the angel saw, what he felt, his ethereal self so overwhelmed by Crowley’s touch.

He never asked. 

He knew what he felt, when at last he undid the tie and turned Aziraphale to face him, and the angel enfolded him in his arms, one hand on Crowley’s mark, the two of them mirror images of each other. He knew what it was like, what brilliant communion flowed between them as they held each other, hands on marks, essences entwined, dancing together in a place where neither questions nor answers held any meaning beyond  _ yes, you, yes, you, me. _


End file.
